Question: You have an electric guitar and electric banjo (but can only use one at a time), no percussion nor bass and a hauntingly talented vocalist. How do you create a memorable performance?
Tuesday night, Fawn, a morphine folk duo hailing from South Bend, Indiana, answered that question in the Gamut room. The group consists of vocalists Anne Ringwalt and multi-instrumentalist Will Johnson, and their answer is an eerie, quirky sound that is more than the sum of its parts.
I was very impressed with their opening bit, with repetitive electric guitar from Johnson and swelling vocals from Ringwalt, which was a contrast to the synths and sweet lyrics of the opening act (I won’t say much, but Middlebury’s own Hannah Habermann ’18 and Tevan Goldberg ’18 were also wonderful).
Throughout the act, the band seemed to be characterized by a very conscious ebb and flow. There was a sense of pace: when to emphasize the instrumentals, when to let the vocals crescendo, when to simply let the rhythmic guitar/banjo play its repetitive lick as the vocals progressed indistinctly through a series of slower, more meditative dips in the music. Rarely did the music accost with a wall of sound, which would be all too easy in such a cramped space, but rather the music and the vocals took their turns in the spotlight.
This sort of sound did, however, suffer from the inability to pull together all its acoustic pieces into satisfying climaxes, and neither the plaintive croons and haunting shouts, nor the twangy banjo and spaghetti western guitar licks could save this act from dipping into a bit of a repetitive template. All told, however, Fawn impressed me, and I would recommend any lovers of folk or indie to give them a listen.
Question: Can you put a number on the experience of being at a concert, on the human factor? Is there any value in even trying to do so? Can haunting swells and mournful lyricism be quantified in a single, solitary digit? Can you really score a live performance?
Answer: Yes. I can and I will. 7/10.
